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isnt this great- at least where I am they are talking about 6 inches of snow tomorrow and it hasnt been above freezing in a month and I'm worrying about what to plant for my bees. Maybe my wife is right in thinking I'm crazy.

I oftentimes wonder this time of year why I live in a place like this.........

The following post came from page eight of the above mentioned thread. Note that these are last years prices.

posted April 21, 2004 10:50 AM
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Earl,
I am sending this in e-mail form also, but for anyone else who needs hubam clover at reasonable pricing contact;
Valley Feed and Seed
1-800-658-1775
Ask for Terry, he knows Bullseye Bill "from over there at the gun thing"

They will take plastic.

They can get it in to them in three days. Cost on a fifty lb bag is $137.20, and they will ship UPS to any destination. The shipping charge is actual freight plus $1.90 for repackageing.

I buy all my seed at the local co-op, Southern
States. Up north, there is Agway. Other places,
there are sure to be other co-ops.

I overseeded 500 acres with a mix of clovers, but
had to wait 3 years for the drought to end, and
for some actual serious clovers to get established.

Buy the real money from this effort is NOT in
the honey.

It is in producing hay for horses, cut, left to
dry, and then bailed with an old-fashioned square
bailer, and moved to a hay barn ASAP.

I never understood why farmers were such religious
folks until the hay was cut, and I realized that
one unexpected rainstorm would turn high-protein
horse hay into much lower-value cow hay.

If you pay attention, you will notice that none
of the local TV weathermen will EVER predict
three days in a row without at least a "chance
of showers" during haying season. They want to
protect themselves from being torn limb from
limb by a mob of angry farmers bearing pitchforks,
torches and blunt instruments.

And yeah, the bees liked the clovers, but I doubt
if selling hay and honey will ever pay for the
land. I bought it because all I want is my land,
and all the land that adjoins my land.

One word of caution on making hay.
If you plan on selling your hay don't plant any of the sweet clovers. sweet clover can create coumadin when it gets a little moldy, which can cause cows (and maybe horses) to bleed to death.

Personally I planted five acres of sweet clover, both yellw and white, a few acres of buckwheat, and 200 black locust trees on some real rough ground. Sweet clover is cheap to buy, but you do have to work the ground up and wait a year for the bloom. And it is very good for the soil.

This year I plan to plant some basswood trees and some kind of shrubs, not sure which yet.

Jim: A farmer doesn't want to own all the land, just the land next to him...

Does anybody know where I could inexpensively obtain some basswood trees? My local nursery is small and doesn't carry many trees of this kind, so if there are any nurserys who sell over the internet, it would be a lot more convenient fror me.

SAINFOIN - A perennial legume. Grown in Europe & Asia over 100 years. Grows 3' tall producing an abundance of pea shaped seed. Good for deer & turkey. Beekeepers like it for high yield and high quality honey. Plant 25-30#/A. Early Spring to late Fall.

How did your clover field turn out? I was looking through the archives and you said, you recently planted 10+ acres of diffenent clovers.
Can you tell which type was the most productive?
Would you try anything different?

Beekeep
the first numbers refer to the age in years of the seedling. the second number is the years after the transplant.
The biggest tree they sell is a 2/2 usually. that means after it was 2 years old it was grown 2 more years in a transplant bed.
I always try to get the biggest tree, but if you get them too big they are harder to plant using the tree planter i get from the county extention agent. Another place I had good luck with was Carino Nursery in PA. but they do mostly evergreens. Their price for Black Locust can't be beat though! Last year I ordered 2/2 sugar maples from Cascade but they sent me 2/0, they were out of the other ones. Only charged me for what they sent though. I also put brush blankets on usually but that is another subject.
david

How did your clover field turn out? I was looking through the archives and you said, you recently planted 10+ acres of diffenent clovers.
Can you tell which type was the most productive?
Would you try anything different?

Well I had different results in the two years since I planted it. The yellow has been right on target, very little to no bloom the first year and good bloom the second. Some day that it will only bloom good every other year, I hope they are wrong and it blooms good every year. I know it does have a life expendency of about four years when it will have to be replanted.

The Huban was a great hit the first year. The spring bloom was a bit light, then it appeared to die out during the drought, then in the fall it bloomed again heavily until the killing freeze. The hard lesson learned is that Huban will not compete with other plants and will choak out. Dear old dad may be a good wheat, cow and horse farmer, but he don't know manure about clover. So when he insisted that disking was enough ground preperation I did it his way and wasted a year of Huban production.

So, I lost my huban field. I planted it into hairy vetch last fall and I have a good stand of it ready for this comming year. (Side note) I also threw in turnip seeds for deer forrage. Worked very well and we had lots of fresh turnips through late December.

I had also planted alfalfa. I had a fair stand but it was nearly killed out from the aphids last spring and it only produced one cutting. I plan on turning it into huban this spring.

Part of the alfalfa plot was turned into Buckwheat for a late crop. It was very dry and I got a stunted crop. It only grew to about a foot to sixteen inches high. However the bees really worked it from 10 am until about 1 pm. I had patches of dark honey in the frames that were a bit difficult to keep seperate from the light honey. It appeared that the deer and wild turkeys got more off of that patch than I did. After I finaly got a good rain another stand came up but it was too late for it to bloom.

In the pictures in the above link you can see the yellow clover blooming in the background. The gray band is the previous years huban stocks intersperced with yellow clover. There was no huban bloom this year but there was some yellow in it's place.

Huban will bloom all growing season except during the heat of summer and drought.

It is more feasiable to plant fill-in crops. Plant nectar sources that will bloom when there is nothing else in your area blooming. Buckwheat, hairy vetch, and alfalfa are three good choices for my area.

If I was to plant only one clover it would be Huban as it has the highest yield over the longest time span.

Alfalfa is too troublesom as I should spray it every spring for the aphids, but the coop won't come out for such a small field, so I shouldn't bother with it.

Buckwheat is a great choice but it also is work intensive in as much as it takes a lot of trips over the ground with a tractor to keep it going. The initial planting takes at least five trips over the ground. Plow, disk, disk, harrow, plant. Succesive plantings takes the same unless you cut it and haul off the fodder, but then that takes at least three trips cutting, raking, and baleing. If you know someone with the right screens for their combine it could be cut that way then you could disk, harrow, and sow the next stand.

My plan for now is to end up with Huban and vetch. I will probably keep a strip of buckwheat going too. If it doesn't get any taller than it did this year, all I will have to do is disk it and replant.

Bill
Did you ever try discing the buckwheat down and letting it reseed itself? I put in about 2-3 acres of buckwheat last year but it was too late to disc in. I was thinking about planting it a little earlier this year and discing it in for a second crop.
david

Last summer was my first buckwheat crop, so no, I haven't yet. I would be hesitant to try it for a first planting in the spring as the deer, turkeys, and field rodents have forraged most of the seed. I will plant with a good seed for the first planting, then IF it makes seed I will try discing for a second IF there is not too much vegitation to deal with.

I tried discing in the buckwheat after it went to seed - only about 30% of the plants grew and bloomed. The last buckwheat planted last August came up ok but the deer (and other animals) bit off each plant about one inch from the ground!